Porter Robinson
Goodbye To A World - Commentary
""Goodbye To A World" is... a contender for my favourite song of the album. I remember- it was the first time I'd tried to work with, like, sound fonts, N64 type sounds, and write stuff that was really channelling, um... my nostalgia from the early 2000s, late '90s and games in that vein. And, there was a huge, enormous thunderstorm outside, it was one- and like a wind storm- it was one of those days where like, the sky turns green, y'know, and a huge tree had collapsed over my driveway, and so there was no getting out of thе house, and it was just pouring, pouring down rain, wind was- y'know, the power was cutting out - that was thе atmosphere I had when I wrote "Goodbye To A World", and how perfect is it that it was like, apocalyptic outside? That's just so crazy to me- I mean, maybe that informed the title and theme of the song. But... this is another, y'know, another song with a robot vocal and... yeah, I mean I think if you listen to it... the message is pretty, pretty upfront. It's- y'know, to me it's very clearly a sad... a sad song, but this notion of 'world destruction' or a world disappearing is really dear to me, I've talked about it in interviews before, but I was very much attached to these online worlds and MMORPGs like 'World Of Warcraft' type stuff - I was really into a game called 'Star Wars Galaxies' and another one called 'City of Heroes' and the thing about these games is that when an online roleplaying game that millions of people are connected to goes away, when the game ceases to be profitable, and the servers shut down, it's not like other games where ten years down the line you can just... plug i the cartridge and bask in the nostalgia. It's not like that. It's- once those games are gone, those worlds that you very much immersed yourself in are gone. And that was a big deal to me, when my favourite games disappeared and I couldn't go there anymore. And, as an adult now, I think it's just a very romantic notion, and that's why I think the whole idea of like, a beautiful apocalypse is really evocative to me. I love that. Y'know, this isn't a zombie death thing here, this is, this is like pretty, y'know? This is... a beautiful world kind of disappearing in a clean way. That's sort of how I see it."